Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Australia’s oldest (founded in 1891) and most renowned golf venue, has hired Doak as its design consultant, a position formerly held by Martin Hawtree. It’s “as good of a gig as I can imagine,” the Traverse City, Michigan-based designer said in a comment posted at GolfClubAtlas.com.

For Doak, the main attraction of the job is a chance to work on a pair of true world-class layouts, particularly the club’s West course, which he said in a recent interview “might be the place which has influenced my own design style the most.” The track, which opened in 1931, was designed by one of his idols, Alister MacKenzie, and is a fixture in rankings of the best courses on the planet.

Noteworthy factoid: MacKenzie never laid eyes on the completed course.

No renovation plans are currently in order, but Doak knows that the club’s courses are, as he put it, “feeling pressure from technology.” He’s expected to make a site visit later this year, presumably before November, when Royal Melbourne hosts the Presidents Cup.

One other thing: Rumor has it that the club, which is located in a southern suburb of Melbourne, may purchase an adjacent golf property, Sandringham Golf Club, and renovate it.

SLIDESHOW PHOTOS BY

About Us

For more than 25 years, Robert J. Vasilak has provided development-related research services to many of the best-known golf companies on the planet. He's been the managing editor of a Washington, DC-based business magazine, and he's written for Esquire, the Washington Post, Golfweek, and other publications. In 2008, he created the first (and still only) publication dedicated exclusively to international golf development, called the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. Some of the material on this blog originally appeared in the World Edition, in a slightly different form. For more information about the World Edition, or to receive a free issue, send us an e-mail at WorldEdition@aol.com or call us at 301/680-9460. You can find Vasilak's feature stories about golf development at Golf, Inc.